ALICE2

To promote and support collaborative research, within Latin America and between the region and Europe, through the consolidation of RedCLARA (Latin American Cooperation of Advanced Networks) and its network infrastructure and by promoting the creation and management of research communities which work on development-related topics (UN – Millennium Development Goal – MDG) and the topics proposed by the FP7 (7th Framework Programme – European Commission).

RedCLARA (Uruguay), Coordination institution

Latin America: INNOVA|RED (Argentina), ASDIB (Bolivia), RNP (Brazil), REUNA (Chile), RENATA (Colombia), RedCoNARE (Costa Rica), Cedia (Ecuador), RAICES (El Salvador), RAGIE (Guatemala), CUDI (Mexico), RedCyT (Panama), RAAP (Peru), RAU (Uruguay), CENIT-REACCIUN (Venezuela).

Europe: DANTE (United Kingdom), RENATER (France), GARR (Italy), FCCN (Portugal), RedIRIS (Spain)

• A high-end upgradeable infrastructure with low maintenance costs, RedCLARA2, which will become the infrastructure of choice for collaboration in research and education within LA and with Europe.
• A set of user communities (researchers, educators, students) working together in solving MDG related issues and participating in ALFA & FP7 calls.
• A strong, well managed, participative, sustainable organisation with a clear funding model.
• A network with wide coverage in the Latin American Region with strong ties to the Caribbean.
• A large group of technicians, managers and community leaders empowered to collaborate with their European counterparts and take advantage of funding opportunities.

The development of ALICE2 is structured into Work Packages, which are related to the project’s five objectives. A sixth objective has been added, namely Visibility, that is related to all the project’s dissemination activities, which must fit in with the Visibility parameters established by the European Commission.

1. Maintaining and further developing the network infrastructure of RedCLARA with the provision of a continuous, inclusive and persistent environment for electronic collaboration for research and education within Latin America, with the emphasis on supporting a higher education and research collaboration space between Latin America and Europe. This upgraded version of RedCLARA will be based on IRU (Irrevocable Right of Use) contracts for dark fibre and wavelengths, to ensure low ongoing costs.
2. Creating user communities to ensure the utilization of RedCLARA in applications related to the MDG, as well as fostering the collaboration within Latin America and with European Researchers in FP7 priorities and strengthen the collaboration with European facilities such as: ESO, Pierre Auger and TIGO Observatories among others.
3. Developing a funding model that provides long term stability and sustainability for Latin American regional research and education networking. This model will be based on a stronger CLARA organisation, a widely embraced cost distribution model and a solid financial management.
4. Consolidating the long term existing geographical coverage of RedCLARA, and seek to expand it to include the developing research and education communities of additional Latin American countries and to further contribute to the region’s digital inclusion via its research and education communities. To do this, the project will seek to involve all Latin-American countries in the Project and generate synergies with the NRENs by creating a terrestrial communications infrastructure that can also be locally used to build or extend the NRENs.
5. Empowering the NRENs and their user communities to become active players in the research and education networking community by providing training and tools for their technical, management and academic communities.

Work Packages:

• WP1 - Project Management (responsible – CLARA)
• WP2 - Procurement (responsible – CLARA)
• WP3 - Dissemination (responsible – CLARA)
• WP4 - Networking Technologies (responsible –RNP)
• WP5 - Marketing and Services (responsible – CLARA)
• WP6 - Application Promotion (responsible – RAGIE)
• WP7 - Sustainability (responsible – CUDI)
• WP8 - Inclusion (responsible – RAICES)
• WP9 - Human Capacity Building (responsible –RNP)